


Rain, if.

by Tolpen



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Assassins being insufferable brats, Boys being nineteen, Complicated Relationships, Death Match, Exam term, assassins being assassins, somebody lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-08
Updated: 2018-02-08
Packaged: 2019-03-15 15:02:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13615863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tolpen/pseuds/Tolpen
Summary: Whenever two students had a problem with each other, one almost always offered to arrange a meeting. Two Assassins met, one returned. Ludo doesn't deserve his terrible classmates, namely the most insufferable person who has ever walked the Disc, and the manipulative know-it-all who will steal your dogs while you watch helplessly.





	Rain, if.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [oneinspats](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oneinspats/gifts).



> 1oth Feb 2o18 - Revised for grammar.

-Sunday-

April came to Ankh-Morpork. It seeped in thorough the river Ankh, crawled up on the bank and seated itself in the crevices of the paved roads from where it spread like weed and wild flowers in a garden of an old lady who no longer has her strength to take care of it.

April came to the De Chacal Academy, more known as the Assassins’ Academy and the Guild of Assassins. It came from above thorough the leaking roof and dripped behind the collar of undergraduate Johan Ludorum. He looked up and sighed, but that was less related to the weather and more because of his insufferable classmates.

That was the thing with young Assassins – they were desperately trying to be cool and fit with the mature adults. Or with Ludo. He never wanted to be cool, he only wanted to focus on his studies and enjoy his life while he still had it. Somehow this attitude was what made his classmates (and not only them) think he was the coolest.

No one ever got the reputation of a cool kid by trying their hardest to seem as such, as Ludo had once tried to explain to Downey. His friend hadn’t understood him as he was still desperately seeking attention and acknowledgement at other people, often people he held in high regards, despite he’d rather bit off his tongue than to admit it. And since these people never cared as long as Downey was being nice, he sought acknowledgement as the most insufferable person who had ever walked the Disc.

The people were in fact just one person,  1 namely Vetinari. Ludo thought him to be trying his best to be a cool kid as well, but with a strategy a step ahead of everyone else’s. He had realized you couldn’t become cool by aiming for it, so instead he put a lot of effort to be disinterested in everything but knowledge, not care about others and disobey the laws of cool and popular people in his own quiet way of ignoring them completely. In other words he took a great care that people thought he didn’t care what they thought of and about him.

‘Both attitudes,’ said Ludo to himself as he moved on another chair where it wouldn’t rain on him, ‘while being radically different, have the same results. First, nobody likes either of them and aside from me can’t really get along with them. But then, I know them. Second, they always pick fights with each other with or without a reason.’ For a while he had considered bringing those two together, but then he changed his mind. Watching them fight was a lot of fun, their relationship wasn’t really Ludo’s thing to worry about, and he wasn’t entirely sure if he was ever able to stop them, were they together and not against each other.

Truth be told, Ludo would had appreciated that little war of theirs more if it was a little bit quieter. Especially with the upcoming exam from Literature History when Ludo needed every second to study he could get.

He lost track what this argument was about, but now he was sure Downey and Vetinari were being asses just for the sake of it. At this point it wasn’t even funny anymore because the boys were just repeating themselves and their insults. This was either going to end in a fight or, in the worse case, saying something the other one would take really personally and would force him to retreat somewhere he could lick his wounded soul. Ludo really hoped it was going to be the first. Broken noses heal better than broken hearts.

“Irrational? Are you calling me irrational? You, of all people?”

‘Oh for Offler’s love, tune it down you two…’

“Yes, I am. You are more irrational than the square root of two!”

“This joke is older than the terrible books you hide behind like a coward!”

‘Downey, by Brutha’s prophecies, he isn’t deaf, no need to shout.’

“Study of the past is a wise decision, not like you would know one. It isn’t cowardice.”

“Oh really, Dog-botherer?” Ludo didn’t like Downey’s tone, not even the slightest. This was the voice he usually used right before he threw a knife. Just in case, his friend was ready to tackle him right back into his armchair was he to go as far as to get up. “Prove me then. Meet me at midnight on the roof of the Tower of Art.”

For the first time since the argument had started, Vetinari looked up from his book, and gave Downey a long cold glare. Ludo relaxed in his chair. ‘Havelock is considerate and one of the more mature of our class,’ he told to himself.

And then just as Vetinari opened his mouth to reply, Ludo remembered that the boy would swallow handful of razors one by one rather than his pride, and that it is too late to stop him now.

“Very well then. The next Octaday night, after the Literature exam?”

‘Oh no, no no no no!’

“Excellent.”

‘Oh.’ Ludo turned page and sighed heavily. He wasn’t sure what he had done to deserve this, but it had to be something terrible indeed. ‘Fuck.’

-Wednesday-

The Octaday was approaching quickly. Faster than Vetinari liked it. Usually the days flowed slower than frozen honey, but this was an unusual situation. You don’t get to fight a death match each week after all.

Midnight meetings were sort of a student tradition at the Academy. The teachers silently disapproved of it all, but most of the time they couldn’t do much about it as long as they didn’t know it was happening, and later it was too late. Whenever two students had a problem with each other, one almost always offered to arrange a meeting. Two Assassins met, one returned. ‘Meet me at midnight.’

Vetinari wondered how such an idiotic and clearly contra productive thing could have become a tradition. It probably had to do with it being a tradition of young students at an all-boy school for arrogant rich kids. He couldn’t imagine a girl agreeing to do this. 2

He found himself sitting on his bed, sharpening knives. As if they could get any sharper. Or as if it could help him. Downey wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed and was an average Assassin at best, but that had nothing to do with him being damn good at killing people and surviving things. Being a good Assassin meant playing by the rules, no matter whether they were written or not. Downey was a poor reader, thought very little of all decorum and obligations, and was deeply convinced it was better to be a bad living Assassin rather than a good dead one. With some hesitation Vetinari admitted to himself that this was exactly how it was going to end – One average at best living Assassin and one considerably good and very dead Assassin.

He picked up yet another blade and did his best to sharpen it beyond perfection. When they deliver his dead lifeless body to Madam, he'd have to die the second time of shame if there was just one slightly dull seeming knife.

-Friday-

It was as if the time had slowed down just for the sake of mocking him. Downey was sitting at the edge of the metaphorical chair. He felt like he had been eating his own nerves which would, aside from his shaking hands and nervousness, explain why he couldn't bring himself to eat anything. Normally he would blame it on the poor quality of the meals in the school canteen and wrote it off as nothing, but doing so in the past few days would have been a false accusation.

He wanted to talk about his thoughts on the whole thing with someone. Anyone.3 He tried talking to Ludo the other day, but he chased him out calling him an utter scag, and Downey had to admit that his friend had quite a point. However, that meant he ran out of options. So he was gnawing on his own mind alone and in silence. He felt like he was going crazy.

Everything was better than to think about the upcoming Octaday, so he was keeping himself busy as much as possible. That caught a lot of teachers off guard, because he did his homework, all of it, and even on time. By Thursday he ran out of work and ideas, hell, even his room was spotless clean and organized!

At the moment he was considering his wardrobe. 'Dog-Botherer is all about the style and the fancy rules. If he wants to do this, then let's do it this way.' After all, getting a reaction, any reaction really, out of Vetinari was a victory on its own.

Downey wasn't afraid of Vetinari. He knew him good enough for that. He was fast-thinking and smart, cautious, calculating, pushing people wherever he wanted them to be. If Vetinari wanted, he could have killed anyone just by thinking about it. And so Downey wasn't afraid. You can only be afraid of an unfavourable outcome of probability. Here wasn't any unfavourable outcome, nor favourable outcome, only the deadly certain one.

After a few more moments of pondering, Downey took his best coat, the one in shade of black that was darker than anthracite, and threw it on the bed. 'You only get to die once,' he thought. 'I might as well look good while at it.'

-Octaday-

Corporal Alfred Colon was trying to squeeze himself a bit more further under the poor shelter that the wings of an angel statue were providing, so he wouldn't be completely out in the rain. April rains were cold and this sleet was close to freezing.

“I don't know how you can just stand here while the sky can just piss itself and on your back,” he mumbled to the statue. It didn't reply to him. What an arrogant heavenly marble bastard.

The clock on the Teachers' Guild announced it was quarter to midnight. That meant that just fifteen more minutes and he could go home to his wife and warm, dry bed. It was really unfair that the watchmen didn't get any free days on weekends, not even on the Octaday! Even soldiers in the army got a free weekend each fortnight. Alfred really seriously considered changing his job.

He looked up towards the Tower of Art he couldn't see thorough the heavy curtain of rain. 'Awful weather,' he thought. 'Terrible, really.'

-Monday-

It had been raining since the early afternoon and it didn't seem it was going to stop any time soon. Downey was walking back and forth in his room, sitting down on his chair just to get up only a few seconds later to continue his purposeless journey around the small bedroom. Occasionally he glanced out of the window into the wet darkness.

Going outside was unthinkable. Of course, Downey wasn't made of sugar and a little rain wasn't going to kill him, but he refused to face Vetinari soaking wet. And thinking about it, it seemed to him like quite a dumb idea going out with his weight worth in weapons on himself. Good garb was expensive and Downey wasn't going to let it rust just because he let it get unnecessarily wet in the rain.

Of course he wanted to go to the meeting. He had arranged it after all. He wanted to have it behind himself as soon as possible. The whole week had been full of preparations! He just... couldn't go in this weather. Five minutes after midnight. Only a complete fool would climb up the Tower of Art in this rain.4 A minute passed and Downey was still circling in his room like a tiger trapped in its cage.

'It doesn't even have to stop raining completely. Only a little would be enough. I'll go if the rain gets a bit lighter,' he promised to himself. 'Even if it means I arrive late, I'll go. Just the rain needs to give it a break.'

The rain didn't give it a break. If anything, it got only worse. Downey, upon realizing he wasn't going to go anywhere but was too nervous and excited to fall asleep, skipped downstairs to the Guild's library. After all, the exam term was approaching, it was April and May was knocking on the door. If Downey wanted to pass the finals, and he wanted to, he better had to study his Geography.

The library was quiet, empty, and despite Downey had his best coat on, it was very cold. And because of that and also the strict rules against open fire, he picked his books and moved to the study room next door which had the modern technology of fireplace.

One of the armchairs in front on the hearth had been already occupied, which didn't surprise Downey at all – It was a good spot as it was close enough to fire to provide both warmth and enough light to read. However, what had him surprised was the fact that the person sitting there was no one else than Dog-Botherer himself.

Downey sat down in the armchair next to him. He felt Vetinari looking at him while pretending to read. Not like he was judging, he was doing exactly the same. He couldn't see any visible weapons on him, which only meant he had taken a special care for them all not to be seen. It was the first time he had seen Vetinari in proper black instead of the usual dull greyish dark or even the greenish grey he thought nobody noticed him wearing in the Stealth&Concealment class. He was also drier than a bone. Downey suddenly felt incredibly honoured.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw his fellow classmate shift in his seat before he said: “Awful weather, isn't it?”

“Indeed. Terrible,” Downey nodded.

For a while they were sitting in a sort of awkward and yet comfortable silence, and then Downey stood up and asked: “I am going to drop by the kitchen. Tea?”

“That,” Vetinari smiled softly into his book, “would be very appreciated.”

 

 

1 The amount had been greatly reduced over the time. This was the _Assassins‘_ Academy after all.

2 He was, of course, completely right. Girls would settle for nothing less but a war and a possible genocide.

3 Not Dog-Botherer, of course.

4 While Downey would be the first to admit he is a complete scag, he worked on it for many years, he didn't consider himself a fool, because fools had their Guild next door.

 


End file.
